thl: What I want in a chair

From: Thorsten Leemhuis <fedora leemhuis info>

To: EPEL development disccusion <epel-devel-list redhat com>

Subject: thl: What I want in a chair

Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 18:26:12 +0200

Hi all!
I already wrote some things I expect from a EPEL chairmen last week, but
here we go again in a different way
In short: I think a chair is very important to keep things rolling and
working.
The chair should be responsible to do the boring tasks that often nobody
else does otherwise. That includes for example stuff around the SIG
meetings: prepare the meetings, run them, make sure they stay
productive, write the meeting summaries (for the public and FESCo) and
keep the schedule in the wiki up2date. IOW: get things organized.
Further the chair should be the person the Board or FESCo can contact
when they want something from EPEL (which sometimes needs to happen in
private) -- both FESCo and the Board afaics want to have a single person
to contact that is kind of responsible for EPEL. The chair also should
try to be available for and respond to questions in FESCo/Board meetings
and on the different fedora-lists regarding EPEL if needed. Coordinate
the work with other groups like Ambassadors, Infrastructure or Fedora
Packaging is also in parts the job of the chair.
Having a single person to contact is also helpful if outsiders want to
get in touch with EPEL, but can't or don't want to go to a public
mailing list. The chairmen also is kind of representing EPEL to the
wider public.
The chair in his position should also feel responsible to the whole
project area -- e.g. try to keep EPEL running smoothly, make
contributors, users and other groups (like 3rd party repos) are happy
and make sure they feel heard and respected.
The chair for his job shouldn't have much special powers. Only some
might be needed to "herd the cats. One of those areas are IMHO votings:
the recent wiki votings IMHO have shown that coordination and
informations is needed before the voting starts; I also saw some
occurrences of confusing or "to early" votings in FESCo meetings in the
past, that roughly lead to the decision that only the chairmen of the
one that runs a IRC-meeting can issue votings (but htat was never
written down iirc). Maybe other special powers are needed over time, but
I don't think so atm; if they show up then it can be decided by the
Steering Committee as a whole when needed.
BTW, neither the Steering Committee or its chair should be kind of
dictators. We just need a group of people that does the decisions, that
itself needs someone on the top IMHO. But the goal is to balance what's
best for EPEL, the larger community with is represented by the EPEL SIG,
EPEL contributors and EPEL users.
CU
thl